It's a huge benefit for agency/consultant work. You can jump into a project you've never seen before and just know where everything is and how it's wired togeth

It's a huge benefit for agency/consultant work. You can jump into a project you've never seen before and just know where everything is and how it's wired together. You can be immediately productive. The downside is if you want to do something that cuts "across the grain" so to speak, things can get messy. Combine that with Ruby's high dynamism and someone trying to be too clever can make a mess fast (alias_method_chain anyone?). Yeah, node has been incredibly successful but I think it's a fair criticism to say it's also a victim of that success in that it just feels like so much arbitrary complexity. And the flavor of the month changes so fast that projects end up this weird mishmash.